MURFREESBORO, Ark. – His friends razzed him. His wife rolled her eyes. But whenever Bob Wehle could get away, the warehouse manager from Wisconsin would head to the Crater of Diamonds in search of treasure.
Last month, Wehle was sifting soil through a stainless steel screen when he picked up a peculiar pebble. It was gleaming, the color of a lemon drop.
“Now that is a diamond!” he recalled hollering. It was a serious sparkler indeed: a 5.47-carat canary yellow gem of unusual clarity. He called it Sunshine.
“My wife, she’s OK with this now,” Wehle, 36, said with a chuckle. “My friends, they’re not laughing at me anymore.”
The discovery of Sunshine was another glittering chapter in the legend of Arkansas’ Crater of Diamonds State Park, one of the more unusual public attractions in America.
For a $6 fee, visitors can scour the mouth of an ancient volcano in search of a priceless stone. Most days one or two get lucky, as a 9-year-old from Illinois did this spring when she scooped up a clear white diamond with her toy shovel, naming it Sparkles. The 50,000 who visit each year find ground rules that are tantalizingly simple: finders keepers.
“It’s like going to Las Vegas and pulling the lever on a slot machine,” said Alan Opel, 58, of Monrovia, Calif., summarizing the park’s appeal after a day of mucking through the mud in vain. “Only here, the chance to hit the jackpot costs a whole lot less.”
Since an illiterate farmer named John Huddleston found what he called “diamints” here a century ago while preparing to plant turnips, this gravelly, greenish patch of dirt about two hours from Little Rock has yielded more than 75,000 diamonds: shimmering marvels worth thousands as well as brownish stones too cloudy to cut into jewels.
It continues to attract dreamers in search of instant riches; cheapskate fiances desperate for free engagement diamonds; and die-hard rock hounds yearning to uncover a gem so precious that it will grant them immortality.Murfreesboro (pop. 1,800) long ago capitalized on the public’s fascination with precious stones. Restaurants and souvenir shops that ring the old courthouse at the center of town and hotels such as the Queen of Diamonds Inn and Diamond John’s Riverside Retreat cater to starry-eyed tourists.
The state park also features a campground, a small water park, a shop that sells gems and diamond-themed knickknacks, and booths where prospectors can rent shovels and screens. Many families bring picnic baskets for a daylong outing, but more than a few leave early once they realize that finding a diamond is difficult.
Diamonds often are spotted right on the surface, especially after a hard rain washes dirt off the stones. But most are found through a laborious process: scooping buckets of dirt, sifting it through screens and scanning the gravel. Park officials turn over the top layers of soil every month to give tourists a fighting chance.
“You have to have a passion for it, because it’s not going to come easy. You get out of it what you put into it,” said Eric Blake, 31, a carpenter from Wisconsin who visits the crater with his fiance several times a year. He has uncovered more than two dozen diamonds, none of any real value.
Of the more than 435 diamonds found this year at the crater, Wehle’s Sunshine is the second largest. A Texas couple found a 6.35-carat brown diamond in September, though it is considered less valuable because of its color. The Okie Dokie diamond, a 4.21-carat canary yellow gem found in March by an Oklahoma state trooper who had heard about the park on the History Channel, was valued by Sotheby’s auction house at between $15,000 and $60,000. Sunshine is similar in quality, said park officials who saw both stones.
For one local hero, the hunt for diamonds was never about money. It was about leaving her family’s mark on history. Shirley Strawn’s great-great-grandfather, Lee Jordan Wagner, was the man who found the beautiful yellow Arkansas diamond, at 17.86 carats, that is on display at the Smithsonian. Alas, he did not have the presence of mind to name it after himself – an oversight that haunted him.
In 1990, after years of combing through the gravel and dirt under the guidance of the most famous of all the local rock hounds, “Diamond Jim” Archer, Strawn finally found the one.
It was only three carats in the rough. But it had an extraordinary luminousness. Strawn saved her money and sent it to New York to be cut. In 1998, the American Gem Society gave the diamond its first grade of 0/0/0. It was flawless. An Arab sheik offered a large sum for the diamond. Instead, Strawn gave it to Arkansas, after a private group raised $36,000 to pay her to keep the treasure in state.
Now in the park’s visitors center, there is a ring on display in a secure glass case. It is called the Strawn-Wagner Diamond.
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